When Cayatu, a Chumash Indian woman, is banished from her village, she is taken by two Franciscan priests to join the new Mission Santa Barbara. She is baptized there along with several other new neophytes and begins a restricted life far beyond what she expected. Even though she meets a man she is very attracted to, she yearns for the freer life living on her own along the ocean. In the process of trying to escape the mission, she kills one of the Spanish soldiers, but isn't found out and returns to her stray mat in the mission's women's quarters. She is sent to the soldiers' fort to weave cloth for the men's uniforms and is repeatedly raped by the commandant of the Presidio. A mixed-race child is born of the rape and the baby is immediately taken from her at birth and given to a Mexican woman. Not knowing the woman's infant is the girl she gave birth to, she helps the Mexican woman raise the child. She marries the Chumash man who courts her and her nephew comes to the Mission to be with her. As more Chumash join the mission, because their food supply has dwindled, diseases spread through the mission village and many die. Discipline grows more onerous as the soldiers and priests find themselves abandoned by Spain as it struggles to maintain its hold on its New World colonies. A major earthquake destroys much of the mission, pueblo of Santa Barbara and the Chumash village. The Mission Indians are forced into backbreaking labor to rebuild everything. When the strain gets to be too much, they revolt. Cayatu must decide her future. She begins to leave the mission village but then thinks about her baby girl. The surprise ending brings Cayatu face to face with the commandant who raped her.